John Wise

I tried posting this earlier. The photo uploads without problem. My brain doesn’t. I am left without meaningful banter regarding the posting of this $11 million mountainside villa gathering dust in a saguaro forest. The home is owned by some wealthy old folks who dwell within its luxurious walls a mere two weeks a year. So what. I don’t particularly like the house, nor do I dislike it. We were in the neighborhood, checking out the townhomes priced at a far more reasonable $3 million each.

Someone parked this old truck and left their air-conditioning on. Har, you got me on this one, there is no air-conditioning in this old jalopy, ain’t no radio either, or much of anything for that matter. Maybe that’s why the truck is open windowed and ready for stealing because if you were to grab this truck, you are not going far very fast and you surely won’t be very comfortable. I wonder if the button on the left is for his NOS unit?

Storm clouds approaching. Right about now I almost relish the thought that our housing market is on the brink of a meltdown disaster. It’s just another hour of TV about to play out as a kind of reality show where the poop is gonna hit the fan and pumped up consumers are going to be disqualified, kicked off the stage, rendered not as survivors but as giant losers in a game where some will win big and others will lose large. Yeah, we could take part in this American dream, yeah, we could forego vacations, books, exotic foods, so we could be slaves to our credit cards and a mortgage, but instead, we keep our heads in the clouds where even if a storm approaches the views are simply incredible, and free.

Continuing on a theme, Scottsdale, Arizona, is on a roll. Around the corner, a bit down the street from the waterfront condos I told you about the other day, is this mid-rise condo development. Lots of glass but no canal-side views have knocked the price of these units down to the $500,000 and up level – prices mere mortals can afford – sort of. If your income is hovering around $9,000 a month, you too can call this home, and if you are really bringing in the money, let’s say, oh, about $18,000 a month, you can afford one of the penthouse units with a mortgage payment of about $5.500 a month. Let me put this into perspective for anyone making minimum wage in America. If you are an individual working at McDonald’s, making $5.15 an hour and working 12 hours per day, six days a week,  your extended family would have to drum up 12 people, all working 12 hours per day, six days per week to qualify as having enough income to nab one of these luxury units. Or, to put it another way, you would simply have to work 3,000 hours per month (there are only 720 hours in a month!) to make enough dough. You kids better start taking college seriously.